Statement of Purpose, PhD - Econ

Mz Personal - Applicant Ph.D. Economics - Fall 2013

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STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

1\6 [opening]

The area of my interest is anything that has a lot of Greek symbols and makes me feel like I know more than anyone about a subject no one cares about. If selected for a PhD at the Great American University, I want to start understanding what these symbols stand for. In the short term my career goal is to make a stipend which is more than my salary in INR. In a few years' time I want to earn a title of doctor which will justify my claim that I had a plan in my mind all the many years that I did not have a consistent career. In the long term, everyone will leave me alone.

2\6 [education]

Throughout my education I have taken many courses in linear algebra, matrix algebra, methods of induction, conics, proof based calculus, multivariate differential and integral calculus and differential equations, 3-D calculus and thus have constantly been wondering if I was inside one of those never-ending nightmares where you keep falling. In preparation for a doctoral study I am in conversation with Professor Semiponnu of the Indian Statistical Institute who has agreed to write to you to say that I understand the title of the book he published, if I clean his motorcycle every day for six months.

In course of my dual master's degree from The School Indulged in Parties and Affair (TSIPA), Bigapple University and The Asian Version, Some University Notaversetoidiots (SUN), I studied International Economic and Monetary Finance with esteemed academics such as Prof. Bigshot Prezadvisor and Prof Eximf Economist.


Two experiences influenced my understanding of Monetary Finance greatly.

I was sitting in an exciting class on International Financial Markets at SUN and was dozing when I suddenly understood that the Greek Letters are not a language but stand as symbols for something else like bread and noodles. Consequently I unregistered myself from the class in Classic Greek.

The other was a class on Latin American crises taught jointly by Professors Raremoneymakingeconomist Whorunsahedgefund and Prof Thelawyerwho Knowshowtomakemoney. Like other professor who have ever taught me anything, they also listened to my questions and observation patiently, smiled at me and each other, and patted me on my back. I think they think I am smart.

I studied econometrics with Prof. Yetanother Greateconomist at SUN, for which I received an A+. It took inviting him to eight dinners and 20 hours of listening to his family woes. I also studied econometrics with Prof. Thirdauthorof Thetextbook at TSIPA who once openly expressed his complete shock and dismay about my being in his course.* I think he thinks I deserved much better. Both these teachers were very smart and made a course curriculum that I can send to Economics schools like yours. If you read it you will think I know a lot, but in reality, with people like me in their class, they were not able to go past page 2 of any of the readings.

3\6 [work and research experience]

In Aug 2011 I finished an internship in Investment Banking with a leading infrastructure finance company in India where I found out that some people, who have studied only till high school, make many times more money than you make. Precisely because they are good at typing very fast without making errors and they don't know or care too much about the problems of this world. They call them traders and worship them. Did you know this before you chose your career?

Since February 2012 I am working as a Research Associate with a Small Research Center Funded by an Ivyleague Prof. (SRCFIP) for a project funded by the Gatesandwindows Foundation, that studies something no one else will. Or should. I am working under the guidance of Prof. Whofundsthis Centre, Ivy League University.

At SRCFIP for the first time I came to know that graphs can also have numbers on the straight up and the sideways lines. At TSIPA and SUN we never had any numbers on the graphs.

My work at SRCFIP has directly inspired my interest in PhD. It took me three months to figure out what the project is about and five more to figure out that I cannot do it. So I needed to leave before they caught up. I also realized that at my current saving rate it will take me 102 year and 11 months to repay the loans I took to study at the Bigapple University.  Around the same time I also realized that universities are big and old and thus good places to hide.


4\6 [why Great American Uni?]

Through graduate education and work, I realized the need for more training in Economics and Mathematics to reveal my true potential and reach my goals. Of the places I am considering for my doctoral studies in Economics, Great American University is my first choice for many reasons.

At Great American University, I will learn from, and perhaps collaborate with researchers like Professor Ohmyhe Iscute and Prof. Ohmyshe Ishot.
Professor Ohmyhe Iscute the nobel laureate once gave a talk at SUN and during this talk he spoke looking in my direction. Of course he realized how smart I am. I went up to ask him some questions after the talk. He smiled at me and patted me on my back. I think he thinks I am very intelligent. Now that I think of it he never actually said anything to me.

Prof. Ohmyshe Ishot has been my goddess for many years since I saw a pic. of her on your university website. I can easily say she is the best looking professor in America. I know she also does some Economics research.^

At Great American University, I will have some of the brightest people from around the world as classmates and colleagues. In company of such colleagues, my superpower of invisibility becomes overcharged. These bright people seem to never be able to see that I am standing near, even in front of them. Or hear what I am saying for that matter. I do even better than Bilbo Baggins who could be heard when he was invisible.

The courses at Great American University are geared toward a strong base needed for rigorous research. Such as Math Camp. I think I will take it for a whole semester. The special focus on workshops and seminars in Monetary Economics/ Macroeconomics make the PhD at Great American University an ideal place for me. No home work.

And above all, you guys may actually pay me a stipend to live in your beautiful city for many years. If I was to try and look for jobs on my own, no one will give me even a janitor's job in that place.

5\6 [why me?]

I have demonstrated at every opportunity that I am a self-motivated, organized and disciplined individual (...not! If I had been I would not) have worked as a Research Associate/Assistant for two years. From 2004 to 2009 I was a school teacher. That was the only time I was in a roomful of people who knew less than me. But then they asked me to teach higher grades. Like 5 and 6. There were some moments in teaching higher and complicated grade 6 Math when I started wishing for powers of invisibility. As I mentioned earlier I have acquired these powers now. Which proves my point about being disciplined and finishing what I start.


6\6 [closing]

My zeal and acumen for Economics research, work with esteemed professors, an excellent graduate education and power of invisibility make me a highly qualified candidate for a PhD in Economics. Add to that, my other attributes that render me utterly unable to work at anything else, you have someone that you can bet will finish the PhD program even if it takes him ten years. I have nowhere else to go.

I look forward to a favorable response from the admissions committee of the Great American University.

THE END

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* This one is factual. Not that other things are not, but this prof actually asked me to explain the z- test to him and after listening to my response said, "I think you should not be in this course. All your colleagues are at a different level of learning. But since this is 6 weeks into the course, I will pretend this meeting never happened."

^ I must apologize for this joke, really! It does reflect some people's (and presidents') attitude towards women, not mine.

Family or Ambition - Is It That Simple?

I came across this article published in The Atlantic just now. It has got few of my Facebook friends reviewing their lives and priorities.

The article starts by making itself relevant in this particular month, this is the time of the year when many youngsters will leave homes for college or University for degrees and maybe never return home. It talks about a person who left his small town in Louisiana for good, a long time ago and was thus separated from his sister. While this person went on to be a hot-shot reporter with all the glamour and living the life of big cities, his sister stayed in the town, lived near parents, and worked as a school teacher in a local school. Many years later when the sister was diagnosed with lung cancer the reporter came back to be with her for 19 months. In this time he saw how the closely knit community supported her and took care of her. So the reporter decided to give up his career and moved to the town with his wife and two children.

The article quotes Barry Schwartz. I have been read and listened to Barry many times since I first heard his Ted Talk about happiness and constrains. In this article he is quoted to mention that family members and community are constrains and as his theory goes, restrictions can lead to a more satisfied and happy life, if not the most accomplished one.

The author characterizes ambitious people as inhuman: ambitious people tend to use other people as objects are unable to empathize with others, are unwilling to give up anything for the community, etc.. You get a picture of Dicken's Ebenezer Scrooge.

I want to make a few observations about this article:

First of all, I agree with the article and the general idea that ambition and accomplishment may not be correlated with long term happiness. This although can work in either direction. While this article uses it to say that ambitious people gave up a lot and ended up only as happy as the people who stayed with the community, I can use it to say the less ambitious gave up all the fun, experiences, and perhaps money and did not end up being happier than the (successful) ambitious person even if the ambitious person is more lonely at the end of life perhaps.

I like the qualifier that Barry Schwarz uses for the ambitious people'’s happiness. He says the ambitious people “who achieved what they wanted” are as happy... … Many ambitious people will not achieve what they want. That is the nature of the quest of ambition, whether it is for finding the gold mine (migrating with community and family and making new ones) or of discovering/fashioning mathematical theories (utilizing the stereotype of scientists) success is not guaranteed. You may end up as unhappy a person as your country cousin! 

I have read some Tolstoy, Robert Brown, and other poets who idealize the idyllic bucolic life. And then I have also read Anton Chekhov who italisizes (being Chekhov he would not have highlighted (: ) the frustrations of such a life.

Isn'’t it the personal ambition that has driven the Edward Jenners of our world to work against the ridicule of the community and experiment with inoculation? In fact the word Vaccine comes from the jokes the community members played on him when they suggested he was turning people into cows (Vacca, latin - n. cow). Later he decided to call the inocculations as vaccinations to make a point.

And isn't it that the idyllic and beautiful community in the article can also be the most mean and narrow minded community, keeping an eye on every move you make and telling you what to wear, who to talk to, what to talk about, and in some instances, how the world was made and how it will end. 

Which directly brings me to my next point. Being with a community is not always a personal choice. I know a man (a Muslim) and a woman (a Hindu/Buddhist) who married each other in love, and their family was given up on by their communities (which is to put it mildly since the man was attacked many times to the threat of death.)

10 years after the marriage when a brother of this man passed away, family and community members asked him to return to the native town. So the man decided to leave his job relocate his family. Children were in the middle of the school year. As soon as the family arrived everyone tried to convert his wife to Islam and telling the children that their mother was going to go to hell. And if they love their mother and be like her they too may be triple fried and salted. Luckily the man saw his senses and came back to his life and the far away city where he had made his ambitious career. In less than 3 months these same people who wanted him to come were fed up of him and his kafir family.

35 years after the marriage their second born daughter decided to try to mend the gaps in the families and start by going to a marriage function of a cousin on mother’s side (the Hindu/Buddhist version). She traveled to another city with much effort and sacrifice with her little daughters (3,5) where they were taunted, ridiculed and insulted repeatedly over her stay. She called her father and brothers and cried a lot and returned a smarter person with a rigid determination to never ever mix with the uneducated, uncouth and uncivilized lot.

My next thought is about being alone or loneliness at an older age. 

Charles Darwin was not a particularly dislikeable person. He was a nervous sort, but him and his family were destined to be lonely not because of that. He was bound to be lonely since he believed in, and said out loud, outrageous things like humans evolved out of monkey like species by some convoluted process of evolution instead of the nice and simple, and thus utmost logical theory that God created us from muck on His last working day, just before He went on a long vacation and stopped worrying about us. [By the way this does explain how George Bush became the president of the most influential nation of the world, evolution and logic cannot explain this.]


Inside of a quaint, cute, and cuddly little community, you can be forced to be lonely. Driving the wrong kind of motored vehicle (a motorcycle for example) can make you an outcast, forget about asking tough questions, or many other simple reasons: having a child with special needs, falling in love with the wrong person (different religion or caste) or at the wrong time (too young or too old), or with a wrong gendered person. 

There is a good reason why creative, ambitious, and generally different people flock to the cities. Cities and metro centers are (comparatively more) liberated spaces, where people are allowed to be different without the penalty of banishment or good old fashioned lynching. We are still left with the reported problem of ambitious people who are left alone at the end of their lives. Is that something any ambitious (and/or curious and/or individualistic) person should worry so much about that they live all their lives doing a job they don'’t like, stay married to a wrong person (or a person of wrong gender) or say hollow prayers to the God of the community per force? Or give up live music performances? Museums? International cuisines?

I guess the answer is personal. Your native community may be based in city and may be more educated, sensitive, flexible, and accommodating than mine. I guess the answer also changes depending on where you are in life. 

This month I have been accepted at a university in USA for a PhD course in Economics. I am going to leave India for a few years. I am not very ambitious in terms of a career, I just want to be an expert at a subject. I don’'t want to make a lot of money, just enough to be able to afford myself and my parents a comfortable life. I can’'t say I like everyone I meet, but no one can accuse me of using people as objects (and escape the projectile of the first heavy person I can get hold of). I have a couple of amazing friends a half-dozen family members I truly care about. But I am proving, even to myself, to be different. I am hoping I will find like-minded people in  my university, but I have a feeling that it is not the dearth of like-minded people that keeps me alone. I am just turned inwards. I am emotionally and socially different from most people.

Today I think: 'naaaahhh! I don'’t mind being alone'. I don’'t mind being alone in Chennai, I don’t mind being alone in Santa Cruz. There is so much to do and learn and read and write. And then there is Facebook (hah!). I will learn to live and be alone like a pro and when I am 70, I will be an expert loner. But this is today. Perhaps when I am sick and old, I may not agree with what I am thinking and saying now. I may regret my choices. I may even have become religious then!

What the eff, everything rots.